46 THE HISTORY OF 



acted together ; though at the same time we insisted these plots should be gotten 

 ready by Monday noon at farthest, when we on the part of Virginia intend- 

 ed, if we were alive, to move forward without farther loss of time, the season 

 being then too far advanced to admit of any unnecessary or complaisant 

 delays. 



6th. We lay still this day, being Sunday, on the bank of Hico river, and 

 had only prayers, our chaplain not having spirits enough to preach. The 

 gentlemen of Carolina assisted not at our public devotions, because they were 

 taken up all the morning in making a formidable protest against our proceed- 

 ing on the hne without them. When the divine service was over, the surveyors 

 set about making the plots of so much of the line as we had run this last 

 campaign. Our pious friends of Carolina assisted in this work with some 

 seeming scruple, pretending it was a violation of the sabbath, which we were 

 the more surprised at, because it happened to be the first qualm of conscience 

 they had ever been troubled with during the whole journey. They had made 

 no bones of staying from prayers to hammer out an unnecessary protest, 

 though divine service was no sooner over, but an unusual fit of godliness 

 made them fancy that finishing the plots, which was now matter of necessity, 

 was a profanation of the day. However, the expediency of losing no time, 

 for us who thought it our duty to finish what we had undertaken^ made such 

 a labour pardonable. 



In the afternoon, Mr. Fitzwilliam, one of the commissioners for Virginia, 

 acquainted his colleagues it was his opinion, that by his majesty's order they 

 could not proceed farther on the line, but in conjunction with the commission- 

 ers of Carolina ; for which reason he intended to retire, the next morning, 

 with those gentlemen. This looked a little odd in our brother commissioner; 

 though, in justice to him,, as well as to our Carolina friends, they stuck by -us as 

 long as our good liquor lasted, and were so kind to us as to drink our good 

 journey to the mountains in the last bottle we had left. 



7th. The duplicates of the plots could not be drawn fair this day before 

 noon, when they were countersigned by the commissioners of each govern- 

 ment. Then those of Carolina delivered their protest, which was by this 

 time licked into form, and signed by them all. And we have been so just to 

 them as to set it down at full length in the Appendix, that their reasons for 

 leaving us may appear in their full strength. After having thus adjusted all 

 our affairs with the Carolina commissioners, and kindly supplied them with 

 bread to carry them back, which they hardly deserved at our hands, we took 

 leave both of them and our colleague, Mr. Fitzwilliam. This gentleman had 

 still a stronger reason for hurrying him back to Williamsburg, which was, 

 that neither the general court might lose an able judge, nor himself a double 

 salary, not despairing in the least but he should have the whole pay of com- 

 missioner into the bargain, though he did not half the work. This, to be sure, 

 was relying more on the iriterest of his friends than on the justice of his 

 cause ; in which, however, he had the misfortune to miscarry, when it came 

 to be fairly considered, 



It was two o'clock in the afternoon before these arduous affairs could be 

 despatched, and then, all forsaken as we were, we held on our course towards 

 the west. But it was our misfortune to meet with so many thickets in this 

 afternoon's work, that we could advance no further than two miles and two 

 hundred and sixty poles. In this small distance we crossed the Hico the fifth 

 time, and quartered near Buffalo creek, so named from the frequent tokens 

 we discovered of that American behemoth. Here the bushes were so intole- 

 rably thick, that we were obliged to cover the bread bags with our deer skins, 

 otherwise the joke of one of the Indians must have happened to us in good 

 earnest, that in a few days we must cut up our house to make bags for our 



